Is This You? What an Idea!

I now have a much clearer idea of why some people carry small tablets or notebooks and a pen around with them daily. In cleaning out several boxes, book shelves, desk drawers, bins and bags this past year I’ve come across a treasure trove of the past written in little note books, on calendars, in yearly journals and slips of paper even pieces of cardboard. I even found a tiny slip of paper that had my dress, shoe and even my ring size, tucked inside an old wallet. I know. Sweet. And I don’t even own a dress!

Imagine not having any knowledge of what happened on the third Wednesday of August in say 1997. Especially since there are no holidays in August. I’m saddened that the notes of today are floating on some unseen cloud. Might think you can, but you really can’t read the silver lining on a cloud.

Finally one note I found I feel compelled to share with you. Just because it has a story wrought with frustration, anger, self-respect and 40 tons of life learnings. On a small piece of paper tucked neatly inside of a Bible there are some hieroglyphics that translate to an event in the lives of two farmers. Now I bet you have already decided these two farmers are friends, maybe they are a couple of guys that live on farms that share a common fence, or they live down in the valley, the valley so low. Maybe a high desert valley? Well these two farmers were husband and wife farmers. Didn’t see that coming did you?

The farmers put up a bumper crop. Took all spring, summer and nearly all fall to get the crop into the barn, well stack yard. They began selling their crop to buyers. It was all going very well until one buyer, a slick skunk, got away with a whole truck load of their bumper crop. About, oh let’s say 40 ton of product. Shame on Mr. Slick Skunk. Try as the couple might they just couldn’t retrieve the product or get paid for it. Mr. Farmer tried for a few years, about four years, but the money was lost and never recovered. At the time the product, okay it was alfalfa, the alfalfa was worth about $1640.00 which at the time was a pot full of cash! Today that would be about eight grand!

Long story cut short the slick guy was never brought to task to pay for the stolen truck load of hay. But, yes the “but” buts in. But the farmer was bigger than the skunk. He took it upon himself to be bigger than his anger and dealt with the loss by writing the date, the weight and the skunks name on a little slip of paper and stuck the note in his Bible. To what? Keep his anger alive? Remind him that the skunk needed to be dealt with sooner or later by someone bigger and better equipped to handle the theft? That the end result, I am sure of to this day, would be dealt with in a satisfactory manner? Nope. As I see it that piece of paper was there for me. Yes, of course it’s all about me! Come on isn’t it always about you too?

Actually I know that paper was there to remind him that anger and retribution aka vengeance is not something to build on. It is something to learn from. Since I know he had enough trouble learning that lesson, so much so that he stuck that paper in his most precious book, his Bible, I now have the same slip of paper in my bible and I now am learning from it. Pretty cool that just a slip of a note from 1978 can carry forward such anger and such love too.

So in knowing all that stuff, I also have a little slip of paper that I wrote a note on and now carry it next to his. Mine reads: Today is the beginning of my life. How I live from now on defines who I am. See for nearly a year now I have been carrying some pretty heavy baggage. Anger, guilt, unsteadiness, self-doubt and something I felt pretty sure I wasn’t supposed to have or show: happiness. But recently I was told to just let go of the anger and guilt. To just go let my happy self out and so— Today is the beginning of my life. How I live it from now on defines who I am. The two most important guys in my life, one’s gone but left me a note and one who has always been there for me just opened the door for me to go out and run in the wind again. Pretty cool huh?